Bash for the Bay, Swim Meets and More!

You’ve probably heard of the Bash for the Bay held each year by the Friends of Rookery Bay. This annual event will again celebrate the 110,000-acre Rookery Bay Research Reserve, which stretches from Keewaydin Island to the Western Everglades, encompassing 40% of Collier County’s coastline and protects much of the water along the coastline of Marco Island, Isles of Capri, and Goodland! This year I was delighted to hear that they will hold the event at Ultimate Garages, Naples Luxurious Venue for Exotic and Classic Cars, located at 3101 Terrace Avenue in Naples. And our event chairs this year will be Sandra Lee and Reg Buxton!! I am reading a sponsorship packet for those who want to really participate in this grand event! Sponsors are invited to a VIP Pit Crew Pre-Bash Party at 5:00 PM featuring a private tour of the garage suite and insider access to a one-of-a-kind Formula One Race Car Simulator!! This is an event that is for the elite of the elite! Contact Athan Barkoukis, Executive Director at director@friendsofrookerybay.org or call 239-530-5990. This is an event you WON’T want to miss! The actual event – the 13th Annual Bash for the Bay - will be held on March 18, 2022. Proceeds support education, research, and conservation. All sponsors will be recognized on rookerybay.org/bash (with linkbacks) in the Rookery Bay newsletter, and in Bash press releases. Sponsor logos will appear in the invitation and ads. Very few people get to enter into this “garage”! You’ll want to be one of them! 

*Last week I attended a Lely High School Swim Meet at the Donna Fiala Eagle Lakes Community Park and was thrilled to see all the swimmers there! They had new swimsuits that looked GREAT in black & yellow/orange. They invited a couple other schools who joined them: Golden Gate High School, and for the first time ever, Immokalee High School had formed a swim team. They’ve had a terrific pool in Immokalee for over 12 years, but the school had never formed a team. This year they formed a swim team, and the other two schools greeted them with enthusiasm! The kids swam like fishes and did a great job for their first outing of the year. I saw many youths and adults from Marco there cheering these kids on. There were dad’s and grandpa’s as well. In fact, Marv Needles was there supporting his grandson, and watching his son volunteering in his role with the great team they have built. It was heartwarming to see the parents and grandparents celebrating their young family members. I learned that Marv Needles moved to Marco Island 52 years ago!!! He was part of the celebrated Mackle Brothers team, the engineers who guided the building and design of Marco Island! Not many people were here before them, except the Calusa! ***That Marv!! Quite a guy, for sure. I bet if you sat and talked with him, he’d have a wealth of information to share with you.

*After the swim meet, I drove to the Marco Island Historical Society event where they were introducing the newest book written by Curator and Historian Austin J. Bell, who is also a consulting scholar at the Penn Museum. I bought his first book as well, and I could barely put it down! I had no idea what the Marco Island background really was until I started reading that book, and I had trouble putting it down because it was really interesting, so I can hardly wait to open this one! Now that I’m not working, I’m sure I’ll be able to read it pretty quickly, except I’m getting involved with a lot of things already, and I can’t read and run around at the same time! I was telling a friend of mine today about the museum, and she had never been to the Marco Historical Museum, so I explained what she was missing, and I bet they’ll be there before the weekend! She and her husband are really history buffs, and they have kids in school who are also learning to appreciate the history of our great country. It seems that history is not taught regularly anymore in our school system. Our kids will miss so much!